Sports and Games in the Ancient Near East

Contents

List of Figures

Abbreviations

Introduction – Shane M. Thompson and Raleigh Heth

Part One – Sports

Racing Through the Streets: The Old Babylonian lismu and Athletic Competition – Raleigh Heth

Bearing the Good News: The Neo-Assyrian lismu as Cultic Run – T. E. Kelley

Sport and Speed on Horse and Chariot in Ancient Egypt – Heidi Köpp-Junk

The Role of Sports Medicine in the Social Construction of the Competitive Athlete Body: An Examination in Antiquity and The Modern Era – Kaitlin Pericak

Beyond the Marathon: Long-distance Running in the Ancient World – R. Jesse Pruett

Reinvestigating the Evidence for a Mesopotamian Ballgame – Shane M. Thompson

Part Two - Games

Common Ludic Ground in Bronze Age West Asia and Northeast Africa – Walter Crist

Graffiti Board Games in Archaeology: Scratching New Histories – Alex de Voogt

Board Games in the Iconography of Ancient Western Asia – Anne Dunn-Vaturi

Board Games, Gamers, and Gaming Networks in Middle Bronze Age Anatolia and Nubia – Carl Walsh

About the Author

Shane M. Thompson (Ph.D., Brown University) is Associate Professor of Bible and the Ancient Near East in the Religious Studies Program at North Carolina Wesleyan University. His current research focuses on leisure activities, performance, and power relationships in the ancient Near East. He is the author of Displays of Cultural Hegemony and Counter-Hegemony in the Late Bronze and Iron Age Levant: The Public Presence of Foreign Powers and Local Resistance (Routledge, 2023).

Raleigh Heth (PhD, Notre Dame) is an Assistant Teaching Professor in Purdue University’s Cornerstone Integrated Liberal Arts program. He has published on matters dealing with ancient Near Eastern languages and history, including co-authoring A Student’s Vocabulary of Akkadian in Assyrian Royal Inscriptions (Eisenbrauns, 2025). His individual work deals primarily with the reception of the religious and cultural heritage of Mesopotamia in Biblical literature, focusing particularly on ancient Near Eastern mythic texts.